Minsk: Several defendants in so called Press Club Belarus case at liberty

All of them were detained at the end of 2020 as part of the so called Press Club case. They have spent near­ly eight months behind bars. To date, there has been no infor­ma­tion about the release of two oth­er defen­dants in the case, Kseniya Lut­ski­na and Dzya­nis Sakalous­ki.

Their four col­leagues were freed ‘as part of an act of par­don’, Press Club Belarus team said on Face­book.

On Decem­ber 21, the Press Club Belarus founder Yuliya Slut­skaya was met at the air­port upon her arrival in Min­sk and tak­en to the Depart­ment of Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions. Yet at the same time, the police searched the flats of the organisation’s direc­tors Ala Sharko, Syarhei Alsheus­ki, Syarhei Yaku­pau. They also raid­ed the office of the inde­pen­dent organ­i­sa­tion, and Slutskaya’s home in Min­sk. On the same day, Slut­skaya, Sharko, Alsheus­ki, Yaku­pau, Press Club cam­era­man Pyotr Slut­s­ki, Kseniya Lut­ski­na (she is relat­ed to a media project co-run by Press Club’s Acad­e­my) were placed in deten­tion. Lat­er, Yaku­pau, who is not a cit­i­zen of Belarus, was released and deport­ed to Rus­sia.

On Decem­ber 21, the Press Club Belarus founder Yuliya Slut­skaya was met at the air­port upon her arrival in Min­sk and tak­en to the Depart­ment of Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions. Yet at the same time, the police searched the flats of the organisation’s direc­tors Ala Sharko, Syarhei Alsheus­ki, Syarhei Yaku­pau. They also raid­ed the office of the inde­pen­dent organ­i­sa­tion, and Slutskaya’s home in Min­sk. On the same day, Slut­skaya, Sharko, Alsheus­ki, Yaku­pau, Press Club cam­era­man Pyotr Slut­s­ki, Kseniya Lut­ski­na (she is relat­ed to a media project co-run by Press Club’s Acad­e­my) were placed in deten­tion. Lat­er, Yaku­pau, who is not a cit­i­zen of Belarus, was released and deport­ed to Rus­sia.

They are accused under Art. 243–2 of the Crim­i­nal Code (large-scale tax eva­sion) and Art. 16–6 (com­plic­i­ty in a crime) of the Crim­i­nal Code, alleged­ly in con­nec­tion with the ‘pub­lic tele­vi­sion project’ by for­mer employ­ees of state-run TV chan­nels. Notably, the arrestees’ rel­a­tives trans­ferred 109,769 Belaru­sian rubles and 58 kopecks, which is as much as, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors, they ‘had failed’ to pay to the state bud­get.

Belaru­sian human rights defend­ers state the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion is polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and aimed at ‘ter­mi­nat­ing or affect­ing their pub­lic activ­i­ties car­ried out for legit­i­mate pur­pos­es as part of civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions in con­nec­tion with the non-vio­lent exer­cise of free­dom of expres­sion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion.’ In mid Jan­u­ary, eleven human rights watch­dogs recog­nised Slut­skaya, Sharko, Alsheus­ki, Slut­s­ki, Lut­ski­na as polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and called on the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to imme­di­ate­ly release them.

Short­ly before their being arrest­ed, Belaru­sian For­eign Min­is­ter Uladz­imir Makey announced lim­it­ing the activ­i­ties of a num­ber of foun­da­tions in Belarus and review­ing their human­i­tar­i­an, edu­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al pro­grams in the wake of the third pack­age of sanc­tions imposed on Belaru­sian offi­cials by the Euro­pean Union. It is known that Press Club Belarus launched a num­ber of its edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams in coop­er­a­tion with the embassies of sev­er­al EU mem­ber states.

Press Club, Belaru­sian media work­ers’ meet­ing point and a venue for lec­tures and dis­cus­sions on the cur­rent social and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Belarus, was financed, inter alia, by EU coun­tries.